This job might no longer be available.

Senior Game Designer

About Us:

PlayQ is a rapidly growing global entertainment and technology company delivering high-quality mobile titles and innovative game development solutions to a worldwide audience. Our games have been downloaded more than 60 million times across the globe, with millions of users playing every day!

Our dedicated teams, based in downtown Santa Monica, CA, work together to craft the clever, visually stunning, and unforgettable experiences that our players love. Our emphasis on individual leadership means each team member has the opportunity to make a big impact, while our commitment to creative freedom gives them the ability to create whatever they can imagine.

It’s this mindset that has led us to develop our own IP, infuse games with rich storytelling, build our own development tools, and solve the deepest technical challenges - all in the name of disrupting the mobile gaming landscape.

Job Overview:

PlayQ is looking for an outstanding Senior Game Designer to help guide our continuing development of world-class mobile games at our headquarters in Santa Monica.

This position will collaborate closely with data and production to determine, design, and implement new features and events for free-to-play, casual games. In addition, this position will contribute to ongoing testing and tuning to optimize key game metrics.

In this role, you will deeply understand free-to-play game mechanics and features both within our game and across the genre, analyze data and propose solutions to improve specific metrics and create compelling game experiences. You will prepare design documentation for these solutions, communicate with multiple teams to establish a shared understanding, and take ownership of features during implementation to ensure quality, functionality, and fun.

The person we are looking for is a veteran game designer who has worked on free-to-play casual games and thereby gained an advanced understanding of free-to-play mechanics, economies, and key game metrics. We are looking for a self-motivated achiever who lives and breathes casual F2P games. The ideal candidate is both creative and analytical, able to collaborate with a team and work autonomously toward defined goals. Success in this role requires embracing the challenge of creating designs that are both engaging and accessible.

Responsibilities:

• Vet and select design features that will positively affect KPIs, meet specific business objectives, and be appealing to the end user; create, document, and own those designs from ideation through live release
• Be a primary contributor to design brainstorms, discussions, feature assessments, and competitive analyses
• Create clear, concise, and comprehensive design specification documents to be used by all development teams to understand proposed features and systems; present proposed solutions to other teams; revise documents to incorporate ongoing feedback and revisions; and continually facilitate communication during development
• Be a primary design voice during sprint planning and own specific features during implementation, working closely with programmers, artists, and producers to deliver high quality features to design specifications
• Analyze user feedback and data metrics to recognize issues, identify areas of opportunity to improve game performance, and glean level design and balance insights
• Use tools to create, test, implement, and optimize compelling game content by fixed deadlines
• Collaborate with data and production teams to conduct A/B tests that vet and verify proposals and iteratively improve game performance
• Deeply understand game mechanics and the myriad options available by which to adjust the user experience, game difficulty, and progress pacing
• Maintain an expert’s awareness of the broader casual F2P game market and, in particular, level-based F2P puzzle titles
• Work with producers and other designers to maintain the high standard of quality across all content
• Ability to balance accessible creativity with rigorous testing and tuning processes
• Ability to be creative within constraints: how many amazing things can you build with a pile of Legos before asking for more pieces?

Requirements:

You are passionate about F2P games, mobile games, puzzle games, all games, game design. You understand and embrace the casual market and the challenges of designing games that are accessible and have broad appeal.

• 5+ years of professional game design experience
• 3+ years of F2P social/mobile game design experience
• 2+ years of puzzle game/level design on at least one shipped title
• Bachelor's degree
• Examples of shipped games we can play
• Deep understanding of F2P economies and key game metrics and a proven history of designing compelling game features that have a positive impact on those metrics
• Expert game design sensibilities with the ability to find the fun regardless of genre
• Be an active player of casual puzzle games, with up-to-date awareness of the current market and deep familiarity with core mechanics, game loops, IAP, and social features
• Previous experience and acquired skill in game/level/economy balancing and optimizations based on metrics data
• Ability to employ whole game thinking, keeping the small and big picture in focus and anticipating the full impact of design decisions
• Superior oral and written communication skills with the ability to engage both creative and technical audiences
• Ability to effectively manage time and work efficiently in a deadline driven live ops environment
• Ability to work independently and solve new problems with minimal supervision
• Confidence in taking full ownership of a design, game system, or content area and defending big decisions
• Willingness to accept and provide constructive criticism
• Familiarity with Google Apps for Business (Mail, Docs, Calendar), Photoshop, and other software (Skype, Dropbox, etc.)

Bonus Points:

• Excellent mathematical and analytical skills
• Mobile live ops experience
• Unity experience
• A/B testing experience
• QA experience

Perks:

• Competitive compensation and equity options
• Comprehensive medical, dental, vision, life and long term disability insurance
• Flexible time off
• 401K plan with company match
• Stocked kitchen with free snacks and beverages of your choice
• Catered weekly team lunches
• Brand new penthouse office space equipped with outdoor patios offering beachfront views
• Monthly team outings and volunteer opportunities
• Help build and support awesome GAMES. For a living! Who doesn't love games?

Interested? Please get in touch!